People who pirate in my experience typically do so because they would never have bought the thing otherwise. Pirates are enabled by technology to have things they wouldn’t otherwise get to have. There isn’t often any “lost sale.” Only free advertisement.

Right but it’s still not stealing any more than those little library boxes people put outside their residence

For 99% of piracy cases if piracy wasn't an option people would simply not get the product.

piracy causes harm to the concept of projected profits and "lost sales" which are neither rooted in reality nor coming from a well grounded expectation of success.

Being greedy causes all this entitlement to things that "could have happened"

Both points are true. Honestly, I pirate stuff wildly, but donate to the authors or buy their stuff and donate it to my local library if I like it enough.

Depends. They certainly lose a potential sale from some people, but many people who pirate books never would have read it if they needed to pay for it. Be that because of a lack of money or a lack of interest. Same with games and shows. So no lost sales there.

You could even argue that pirating helps with sales by causing people who never would have read the book otherwise to discuss it with friends or strangers online. I personally think that argument is a big stretch, but it's not entirely wrong.

But yeah, more pirates should be willing to support authors of books they like. If you think they deserve it, buy the ebook even if you've already read the whole thing.

It's absolutely not that fucking simple. There are so much of economics you are glossing over, and why basically all creators don't oppose piracy, just the labels, publishers, owners.. The meatheads..

OK, but there are barriers of entry to piracy. You have to be tech literate enough to know what to do, and you have to be on top of the latest developments to know where to even go to get the files... and you must have heard about the book from somewhere, presumably some people had to buy and read it first.

There will never be a text published with 100% piracy rate. It's a fantastical scenario.